The existence of gods is an oft debated topic. Although many claim to have a proof or that no proof is possible, this does not mean the issue is closed by any means. Most of the so called proofs are all or nothing, and they turn out to be nothing. Examples include the Ontological Argument, the Argument from Design, Pascal's Wager, etc. Refutations of these arguments may eventually appear. For some sites that are interesting to me, see the sidebar
I am by definition, a weak atheist. Now before you pull out your flame throwers and bibles and Baghdad Vitas and so on, let me explain myself. As the alt.atheism FAQ states, atheism is characterized by a lack of belief in the existence of gods. This may seem a bit odd of a definition, but it is important. The reasoning behind this is actually quite simple, I have never found any arguments that supported a single religion that was valid or had premises I could agree with. While some arguments had premises I agreed with, I found flaws in the logical reasoning that destroyed the argument. Other arguments I have seen attempt to construct a valid argument, but do not use premises I agree with.
The use of the word weak does not imply that my belief is weak, or that I am easily converted. To the contrary, it means that the definition presented above best describes me. Some atheists call themselves strong atheists. These people go further, and state that gods do not exist.
Much discussion and argument goes on about how weak atheists are really agnostics, or are not atheists, or the only kind of atheism is strong atheism. Here I shall attempt to explain the difference between the two more fully, and why they must be different.
Strong atheism as stated above is the belief that gods do not exist. This could also be expressed as (Believe NOT (There Exists (gods))). Please note that this is a definite assertion, that they are stating as a definite claim that gods do not exist.
On the other hand, weak atheism is the lack of belief in the existence of gods. To express this in the pseudo-lisp/logic like notation above would be (NOT Believe (There Exists (gods))). Here the difference becomes somewhat more clear. While the strong atheist is making the claim that gods do not exist, the weak atheist is not making any such claim. Further, the weak atheist does not make any claim, merely denies a claim.
One of the most common misperceptions at this point is to think that the two are identical, or that weak atheism isn't really atheism. Here I shall attempt to address both points, to show why they are flawed. First of all, as weak atheism has no claim inherent in the definition, it cannot be equivilent to any concept that makes an inherent claim. Thus weak atheism cannot be the same thing as strong atheism. At this point, one must realize that denying the truth of a claim is not the same as claiming another claim to be true. To do otherwise is to attempt to apply the Law of the Excluded Middle. As can be easily shown from this case alone, there are more than two possibilities, and denying that one possibility is true does not mean that one claims another possibility is true. As there are many religions, one could easily for example deny the truth of say Christianity, yet not state that all religions are false. One is only making a statement that one holds that Christianity is false. As there are a myriad of religions in the world today, it is unreasonable to assume that the person is claiming that another religion is true merely because they deny the truth of some religion.
The other mistake commonly made is that weak atheists are not really atheists, but agnostics. Here the problem is not in a misunderstanding of the definition, but of a refusal to accept the definition. As agnosticism is a statement that one cannot know if gods do or do not exist, this clearly cannot be in any way equivilent to atheism of any form. In fact, the two concepts are orthogonal to each other. However, weak atheism also fits the basic idea of atheism, a lack of theism, or in other words, a lack of the belief in the existence of gods, which is exactly the definition of weak atheism. Further, most weak atheists describe themselves as atheists, and are accepted as atheists by most other atheists, because the heart of atheism is that one does not believe in gods. Because of this, it is considered reasonable by most to allow those that call themselves atheists to define the term in the way they wish, and if one calls themself an atheist, to usually take them for their word, until one has strong evidence to the contrary. But the lack of implications of atheism is very important to keep in mind, for this helps one to avoid making strawman arguments against atheism.
Another issue that has come up on more than one occassion is the claim that one cannot have no opinion on the issue. While I will not try to refute the claim that one cannot have no opinion on an issue with which one is familiar (though I will not agree with it either), I will refute the claim that one must believe it either true or false. As an analogy, a person might have studied the issue of extraterrestial life. One would thus be somewhat familiar with the issue, having seen arguments for and against the two extreme sides (there is such a thing, there is not such a thing). If however, one fails to find either side convincing, one might withold judgement and refuse to draw a conclusion. One has not affirmed either side, even though the issue appears to be binary, thus one truly is in the middle, in neither camp. In the same way, one can be without belief of the existence of god and without belief in the non-existence of god. The issue is different just because it is more emotional.
In my time discussing religion, I have seen many people who have asked, demanded, cajolled, argued, and even preached that I should believe in Christianity as the one true belief. So, despite my preference to keep my pages fairly generic, I will endeavor into this one realm to explain my reasonings.
While I have shamelessly borrowed from Bertrand Russell to form the title of this section, it is my hope to offer a more concrete, more pointed and more concise argument than he was able to offer, one better suited to the modern fundamentalist.
The primarily reason for being a Christian that I am presented with from fundamentalists is the Christian scriptures themselves, also known as the Bible. It is argued that the words themselves are so perfect as to provide the perfect evidence for Christianity in and of itself. To believe that the Bible is perfect evidence overlooks the numerous problems that I find within the Bible. When I read the Bible, I saw contradictions, logical fallacies, historical and factual inaccuracies, etc. To put it succintly if not politely, it read like medium to low grade fantasy. Those who argue that the Bible is divinely inspired and perfect are not convincing. I must view it with my own reason and knowledge of science. To those who argue that I am spiritually blind and must view the Bible with the help of the Holy Spirit, and once I do this, I will see the perfectness of the Bible, I point out that as I am not Christian, I obviously do not view the Bible through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and thus obviously cannot be convinced by the Bible alone. It is a self-defeating argument.
Others attempt to use some of the many famous arguments against me, and I will address those presently. However, now that I have answered why I do not accept the fundamentalist arguments for why I should be a Christian, here is why I am not a Christian.
I am a skeptic. I do not believe views on a whim or without reasons to back them up. I do not accept fantastic claims without fantastic evidence. To put it another way, the greater the claim, the more out of line with what I currently accept, the more evidence the more solid the arguments I require before I will accept the new claim as truth. This principle may seem biased against unusual claims, and it is. The principle, known as the first rule of skepticism, is designed to protect against belief in unreasonable claims, yet make it still accessible to believe in even extraordinary claims if sufficient reason is given. Until such time as I am given a very good reason to accept the Bible as truth, I cannot accept it as truth.
As with any discussion topic, I see many arguments frequently. One of the most interesting from my point of view is the Ontological argument. While many formulations exist, I choose to use the formulation that is most clear, and easiest to express in formal terms.
Basically, this argument makes the following claims:
This argument can be expressed in many ways, but to understand it fully, please be familiar with modal logic first.
The first three statements are merely definitions, and thus do not pertain to the actual argument at first.
Statement five above, states formally, that It is possible that there exists P. This is all we need formally to destroy this argument. For this is an assumption, and not one that need be granted. In order for this step to be reasonable, one would have to construct an argument that it is indeed possible for a being with maximal excellence to exist.
To understand why this statement is problematical, one could equally well assert that it is possible that there does not exist a being with maximal excellence. However, that contradicts the desired result of maximal excellence being a necessary property. Neither assumption is reasonable to grant. Even if I grant the validity of this argument, the soundness is in question, thus the argument is not reasonable. However, in an effort to be complete, I must point something out. Under Intuitionistic logic, step seven is not valid, indeed it is false. The magical step seven uses the claim (which I am not prepared to refute in classical modal logic) that if a statement P is a modal statement,then P is necessarily true or necessarily false. However, Intuitionism can take that statement and derive a contradiction, showing the problem involved. So if one is an Intuitionist, then one cannot accept the argument in question. As we do not have any reason to believe Classical logic would presume over Intuitionistic logic, or vice versa, the fact that one model of logic that seems applicable to the real world holds this argument as invalid draws into question the entire argument at least as it pertains to the real world.
Unfortunately, many arguments for theism are of this nature, in that they try to hide behind natural language, but fall apart if you examine them critically for they hold as key assumptions statements that are by no means givens. The fact that modal logic was used to explain this argument is by no means troublesome, the modal logic was actually invoked by the argument itself, and I merely used the formal description of the form of logic that was used.
This argument goes under many variations and forms, appearing in both Christian and Islamic religious arguments as a cornerstone. The basic form of the argument is thus:
While the 1 will not be disputed at this time, assumption 2 is in doubt. Indeed, certain phenomena such as atomic decay are indeed uncaused. This presents a problem. While one may wish to argue that such events have no impact on macro-events, one must realize that if even one such uncaused event affects a "macro-event", then one introduces a new chain of actions that trace back to an uncaused event. The fact that people use atomic phenomena for timing is one such example of how atomic events affect "macro-events", but is not necessarily the only method.
Another problem I see with this argument is that it is internally inconsistent. For in order for this first cause to fit the classical definition or concept of a god, it must be some kind of being, or entity with volition. Then the question becomes, what caused god? The normal answer of course is that this prime mover is without cause, being eternal, but then one is of course led to the loophole that perhaps other causes may have caused the universe, etc. It ceases to be a solid argument, by admitting that assumption 1 is no longer strictly true. Once one exception exists, so too can others potentially exist.
Another problem that presents itself is an unspoken assumption of the argument. It is assumed that there is only one first cause. In fact, even if we accept the argument as spoken, there is nothing against several independent first causes all happening simultaneously. In other words, there is nothing in this argument to deal with the possibility of two "first causes" that were independent of each other that later intertwined to mix.
Finally, the problem exists that even if we accept the argument, there is no reason why we must believe that this prime mover is the god of any religious belief. Said prime mover could merely be an atomic phenomena, or a singularity. I seriously doubt that the framers of this argument wish to argue that their god is no more than some physical event.
It has been suggested by others who have read this discussion that my point of atomic decay being uncaused is incorrect. What is important is that the behavior of any individual atomic particle be uncaused. Statistical causes that cause a certain statistical behavior are insufficient for the purposes of rescuing this argument. In the sense of individual particle behavior, and not statistical particle behavior do I refer to the non-causal nature of some events.
This argument is famous for its specificness. Most famous is the form which uses an analogy of a watch and a watchmaker. However, other attempts have been made which attempt to be more rigorous. The arguments attempt to assert that the universe shows massive evidence of a designer or maker. They attempt to make the receiver of the argument accept that some being designed or created the universe, and from there use other arguments to show that it was their god that was this creator. This second set of arguments can only be applied if the argument from design holds up however.
The most classical refutation of this argument is The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins attacks 1 as the key to the argument, providing examples of complexity in nature then arguing that they do not exhibit evidence of design. Indeed one of the normal methods to argue against 1 is to show examples of "poor design," frequently in some of the very features that proponents of this argument enjoy using, such as the human eye. Proponents of this argument look at the human eye and argue that too many things had to work together for the eye to work, that the eye is too wonderful to have come about "by chance." First of all, as any optometrist knows, mammilian eyes have a "blind spot" created by the fact that the nerve fibers for receiving light go into the center of the eye, then all exit out at a single point. This poor design could easily be redressed by having the nerve fibers never enter into the middle of the eyeball, eliminating the need for such a blind spot. Also, as Dawkins points out, the argument is what is known to some as an argument from personal incredulity. Just because one finds an argument incredible, does not make it necessarily false, though it does mean that the argument should be examined further. Also, again pointed out by Dawkins, the human eye has many refinements, and does not need all of those refinements to work. Without these refinements, the eye may function with decreased efficiency, but there is nothing requiring the existence of a lens on the eye for some form of vision for example. The only truly necessary part of the eye is nerves that are sensitive to light.
Using this one example alone, I do not hope to refute the whole range of examples, but more provide a guidepost to how to critically examine each argument for design presented. However, there is one other related argument that must be dealt with, that links the causeless cause, and the argument from design together, the rise of apparent order.
Some will argue that the universe is too structured. That there must have been a structurer, else all would decay. They frequently are known to use the example of a Boeing 747, arguing that the parts would rust to pieces before they would spontaneously assemble themselves into a functional 747 (if any 747 can be said to be functional). The problem here is one of how can complexity arise. Two obvious methods present themselves. One is what mathematicians call iteration. The repetition of a simple rule over and over again. The growth of the snail shell is a result of such iteration. The other method is nonlinearity. If the system is not linear, then surprising results can arise. Weather is an example of a non-linear system. The systems interact in a non-linear manner, creating seemingly complex results very quickly. As an example to demonstrate this method is this. Take the equation, x*x - 2. Pick some number, say 0.123, and push it through the equation. Iterate that result say ten times. Take another number, say .234, and repeat, comparing the final iterations. You will find the results are surprisingly different. This result is caused by the non-linearity. A nonlinear system does not always produce such results, but can in some circumstances. For a very closely related example, take the equation x*x - 0.5, and try the result for a broad range of numbers between -2 and 2. You will note the difference very quickly indeed if you iterate the equations sufficiently.
The result of all of this discussion is to merely point out that the argument fails to convince, as counterexamples do arise to the argument that order does not arise without a lifeform to do the ordering.
In the realm of morality does yet another popular argument for the existence of supreme beings or gods appear. For reasons that may or may not be clear, I will divide these arguments into two categories, arguments that grant humans free will, and arguments that do not. By free will I mean that the future is not necessarily set and known to any entity, that a human has the theoretical capacity to choose between at least two different possible actions.
Without free will, the issue of morality is a moot issue. The reason for this simple observation is if we do not have the genuine ability to choose what action we take, then there is no inherent right or wrong to what we do.
Once we grant the concept of free will, then at least morality becomes a legitimate question. Here are a few arguments stemming from morality that deal with belief in a supreme being.
Morality only with a moral standard setter
The argument is roughly as follows. That a god as an absolute standard
is the only way to define a proper moral standard, that all other moral
standards are whimsical or human creations, and are not static. As humans,
we seem to have some conscience to describe right and wrong, indicating
the existence of an inbuilt morality. Thus, we must believe in a god to
seek direction for our morality, or in the stronger version, that there
must be a god to give us our sense of morality.
The arguments I have described are clumped together here because they are inherently similar. In the weaker version, it does not attempt to prove that there is a god, only that one must believe in one. This argument is easily dismissed when one points out that atheists who do not believe in a god do possess moral standards. While some might argue that their moral standards are inadequate, that is irrelevent. The point is only that atheists exist who have a moral standard of their own, not derived from belief in a god, that in some cases resembles moral standards of highly religious people.
In the stronger version, the argument relies on some inborn sense of right and wrong. This argument is not a serious argument however because of the highly different moral codes of past civilizations. When one examines some of the various warrior civilizations, such as the Vikings, one finds a starkingly different code of conduct than one finds today. As another example, in studies of the so called wolf children, (children raised by wolves who were abandoned as infants), we find no apparent sense of morality whatsoever that is at all different from what they found in the wolf pack in which they were raised. If we had some inherent sense of morality, then these children should show some form of morality that resembles the morality of people today.
As a sidelight, this argument reveals an interesting comment about the common complaint today about "declining morals". For to have morals decline implies inherently some objective standard to judge different moral codes. While some might find this uncomfortable, no objective measuring stick has been proposed to my knowledge that is supported. Even the morality of religion is not a measuring stick, it is merely another morality, deemed by the religion to be perfect by virtue of its origin. But everyone who follows some moral code will likely think their code to be a good one, else they would not follow that code. (Obviously, people would choose a moral code that they appropve of.) Note, that this view does not require one to approve of another moral code, or to use the famous example, to not disapprove of Hitler's actions. Instead, this point points out the difficulty of any such thing. As humans, we tend to measure moral codes by their effect on other humans, attempting to give humans freedom to behave as they will so that it is not harmful. Other standards exist, but it is unimportant. What is important is that without predeclaring one standard, it is difficult at best to hold an objective standard to measure any form of morality.
This does not spell the end for the issue however. Indeed, morality remains a central issue of these debates. But morality is not as simple an issue as some wuld have you believe, especially as many different moral standards exist that are absolute and unbending. As a couple examples, the Utilitarian principle produces an objective standard of morality that is flexible to extrenuating circumstances. Rule Utilitarianism is regarded by some as an improvement, in that it provides further protection for the individual. The Categorical Imperative (Kant) provides yet another moral code, and finally, the original position experiment provides yet a third. The original position experiment is also significant because of the way it allows people to define a moral code themselves, yet not permitting them the luxory of putting themselves into an elite protected class, as they do not know where they will be in this group.
This is a standard argument by contradiction. The problem is of course in step 2. Even if we take the stronger form of this argument which considers evil that which is "non-personal" (volcanos killing others, nasty diseases, etc.), this argument still fails to really define what is evil and what is good. One could easily side step this argument by denying that impersonal actions have any morality inherent at all. If one only considers actions which are caused by a sentient being (say a human), then the defense is to attack the notion of omnibenevolent in 3. Just because a being is inherently good does not necessarily imply that it would always seek to remove that evil. It is perfectly possible that the evil is the least of evils, or that our perception of good and evil are flawed. From such a problem, we are led to challenge this argument which is best attacked on the notion of evil.